heesht, William," interposed grandmother good-naturedly, "if Jen rose
betimes to get milk for the bairn, ye ken yoursel' that ye think the
better of her for it. And so do I. Jen's not the first whose acts are
kindlier than her principles."

But Jen kept her thorns out and refused to be brought into the fold by
flattery, till her father said, "Jen, have ye any of that fine
homebrewed left, or did the lads drink it a' to their porridges? I'm a
kennin' weary, and nothing refreshes me like that!"

Jen felt the artfulness of this, nevertheless she could not help being
touched. The care of the still-room was hers, because, though my
grandmother could go through twice the work in the day that her daughter
could, the brewing of the family small beer and other labours of the
still-room were of too exact and methodical a nature for a headlong
driver like Mary Lyon.

My grandfather got his ale, of the sort just then beginning to be
made--called "Jamaica," because a quantity of the cheap sugar refuse
from the hogsheads was used in its production. In fact, it was the
ancestor of the "treacle ale" of later years. But to the fabrication of
this beverage, Jen added mysterious rites, during which the door of the
still-room was locked, barred, and the keyhole blinded, while Eben and
Rob, my uncles, stood without vainly asking for a taste, or simulating
by their moans and cries the most utter lassitude and fatigue.

William Lyon sat sipping his drink while Jen eyed him furtively as she
went about the house, doing her duties with the silence and exactitude
of a well-oiled machine. She was a difficult subject, my aunt Jen, to
live with, but she could be got at, as her father well knew, by a
humanizing vanity.

He sat back with an air of content in his great wide chair, the chair
that had been handed down as the seat of the head of the house from many
generations of Lyonses. He sipped and nodded his head, looking towards
his daughter, and lifting the tankard with a courtly gesture as if
pledging her health.

Jen was pleased, though for a while she did not allow it to be seen, and
her only repentance was taking up the big empty goblet without being
asked and going to the still-room to refill it.

During her absence my grandfather shamelessly winked at my grandmother,
while my grandmother shook her fist covertly at her husband. Which
pantomime meant to say on the part of William Lyon that _he_ knew how to
manage women, while on his wif